Slip, slap, slop and securities have been keeping holiday-makers busy during the festive and holiday season, with some of the major banks claiming a big pick-up in online trading volumes.

Nabtrade, the sector’s fighting minnow with just 4 per cent of the market, says volumes have increased by 600 per cent in the two months following its relaunch that offered snappier technology and competitive pricing.

General manager Nathan Walsh says: “We want to be the attacker brand."

CommSec, which has about 60 per cent of the market, also said there had been an increase in customers, augmented by about 150,000 downloads of its mobile applications during the past six months.

Richard Burns,
Commonwealth Bank
’s manager of customer experience at CommSec, says it is ready for whatever
National Australia Bank
is planning to build market share.

“Innovation is part of our offer," says Burns. “We are going to improve our website, mobile and social experience with a number of innovations we plan to unfold this year."

Falling interest rates and rising stockmarkets – the ASX200 is up about 13 per cent during the past 12 months – have renewed interest in investing, which had been in the doldrums following the global financial crisis.

Online brokerage is considered a major way of locking in self-managed super, the fastest growing customer segment.

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Wealth managers are staking their claim in the booming $458 billion self-managed super fund market, of which $140 billion is Australian Stock Exchange shares and $134 billion cash, with the remainder in a range of asset classes.

It is also a centrepiece for bank efforts to pull together their wealth management products, which are often higher margin and less capital intensive.

A rally during recent weeks means the traditional summer securities slumber, when investors have been more concerned with suntans than stocks, did not happen this year.

Walsh says that in addition to some heavy trading days during January, Nabtrade had acquired more new clients since November than for the previous 12 months, 25 per cent of volumes were from newly acquired customers and that trading by self-managed super fund members had doubled compared with the heritage group.

“This is a long-term game," he says. Last November, Nabtrade challenged the dominance of rival banks in the online trading market with a $14.95 cost of a trade for less than $10,000; a connected cash management account offering 4.5 per cent on balances up to $1 million; and access to more timely and extensive research.

Andrew Inwood, principal of research company CoreData, said Nabtrade had been “smashing targets" but said CommSec’s market domination meant it was under no pressure to immediately react.

“This sector has historically been sleepy," says Inwood.

He says high savings rates meant investors had been happy to switch between accounts themselves.

“Research shows that two more interest rate cuts and people will be asking what next," he says. “A big bet is that at this stage, a lot will then turn to advisers about where to invest."

The online broking market in Australia has about 615,000 active users, according to Investment trends. Westpac has about 9 per cent and ANZ’s E*Trade about 18 per cent.